FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL: Imagine that as soon as you started reading this review, something boiled over in your kitchen; you tripped on the electrical cord to your computer on your way to turn off the burner and fell and broke your leg just as a power failure plunged your home into darkness.
While not impossible, all of these contretemps befalling you in short order seems a bit much, doesn't it?
That, dear reader, is the impression one gets while watching writer-director Philippe Lioret's All Our Desires, in which misfortune is laid on with a trowel en route to a semi-happy conclusion concocted from earnestly presented and well-acted developments.
It is statistically unlikely – at least one hopes so! – that so many calamities would congregate around a small kernel of characters in so short a time. But each building block is plausible on its own, which is a mark of Lioret's skill as well as his sincerity.
Lioret, whose previous film was the sensitively told and compelling Welcome, is a former sound man. One might say he 'hears’ what's going on in France today and translates it into images. All Our Desires – loosely adapted from portions of Emmanuel Carrère's book D'Autres vies que la mienne (Lives Other Than My Own) – is a pertinent contemporary drama that uses variations on human distress to make unmissable points.
Point number 1: The companies that make revolving credit loans are about as concerned about the welfare of their customers as a hungry grizzly bear is about the surviving relatives of its dinner.
Marie Gillain plays Claire, a young (you can say that again!) judge at the court in Lyons. Claire is accused of unprofessional bias when she makes a particularly compassionate ruling in favour of a horribly indebted single mother. It's true that the woman's children attend the same school as Claire's kids. It's also fairly obvious that the loan company that is suing the defendant preys on under-informed customers via deliberately misleading language. For respecting a human being more than the contract that individual signed, Claire is suspended from her duties.
That's handy because the happily married mother of two adorable youngsters is about to get very bad news from her doctor. The news is of the 'you have X amount of time to get your affairs in order' variety.
Claire's 'affairs' include her blossoming crusade to sanction the vultures who suck decent but desperate people into dishonest revolving credit schemes they can never hope to pay off.
Declining treatment and telling no one her days are numbered, Claire meets with fellow judge Stéphane (Vincent Lindon) in hopes of finding a legal loophole that might work in favour of debt-hobbled citizens. Careworn Stéphane – who compensates for a sterile-seeming marriage by coaching a rugby team – hasn't lost his compassion but he also knows the limits of the law.
Through diligent and creative thinking, they gradually (but not too gradually since the Grim Reaper is on the prowl) hit on a tactic that just might hold up to scrutiny. And if France's legal system doesn't see things their way, there's always the European Court in Brussels.
One 'judgement’ Claire makes is questionable: She doesn't tell her husband – who is happily planting things in the garden of their recently acquired cosy abode – that she won't be around long enough to watch them (or their children) grow.
Oh, yes – detail-oriented Claire plots to find a replacement mate for her oblivious-that-he's-soon-to-be-a-widower spouse, a move that's simultaneously thoughtful and more than a little creepy.
Stéphane and Claire are drawn together in platonic but intense ways. Claire, who cherishes the freedom to make her own decisions, is a wonderful role for the actress and the scenes between Gillain and Lindon are far and away the best thing about the film.
Gillain, now 36, has been acting since she was 17 but had to fight long and hard for the role. She told the French magazine TéléObs that "If this film had gotten away from me, I would probably have given up acting." Oddly enough, despite her already extensive filmography across multiple genres and budgets, Marion Cotillard had considered abandoning her acting career to work for Greenpeace before she landed the role of Edith Piaf.
If you have a soft spot for socially conscious melodrama, this movie may appeal to you. But do not take out a sneakily worded high interest revolving credit loan to buy your ticket!
